The Hindu : New Delhi News : DDA accused of flouting norms of RTI Act

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 07, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

DDA accused of flouting norms of RTI Act

Staff Reporter

"Form `A' runs contrary to the Act"

NEW DELHI: Former Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Goel has accused the Delhi Development Authority of flouting all norms of the much talked about Right to Information Act.

Stating that the Form `A' of the DDA runs contrary to what is prescribed under the RTI Act, he said Clause 3B of the form being issued by the DDA asks the information seeker to specify the reason for seeking information whereas this is not required under the RTI Act.

"The DDA officials do not seem inclined to implement the Act in its true spirit and are least interested in providing information to the public. They also discourage people from filing requests to seek information or try to reject their applications across the counter on one pretext or the other,'' he charged. Noting that the first response of the DDA officials is to deny and withhold information, Mr. Goel said one had to follow up with the application continuously to get any information and even the information provided by the departments is not specific.

Application

And the biggest irony, the former Minister said, was that while there are about 40 Assistant Public Information Officers one has to run around for hours to find out who will accept the application. Further, he said, there is lack of coordination between the APIOs and they do not have even the basic information about the departments with them.

Procedures

Wondering why Form `A' as well as related information was not available on the website of DDA, Mr Goel said he had written to the Chief Information Commissioner of India for streamlining the procedures not only in the DDA but in all departments covered by the RTI Act.

Demanding that all departments have uniform forms and that they should also be available on the internet, he said this would save people the botheration of travelling also save the time they spend travelling and standing in queues to receive and submit these forms. He also demanded constitution of a committee to oversee the working of information officers in all departments and to make sure that the Act is implemented in entirety.

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